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November 29, 2015

Top Example of how to be Empathetic

“I do not ask the
wounded person how he feels, I myself become the wounded person.”—Walt Whitman

This is the
essence of empathy: we don’t merely sympathize
with the other person, we actually take
their suffering on ourselves. We take their place. In essence, we sub. for
them. As a part-time substitute teacher, when my health allows, I can safely
say that subbing is anything but easy, but it’s worth it. Empathy is the same.

A couple of
weeks ago, I wrote a blog
post on using empathy before we judge people. We don’t all act alike, or even think in the
same manner. Therefore, it’s unfair to
assess a person with only limited information, in many situations. First,
we should have a penetrating comprehension of their limitations and
motivations. I admit this is an ideal
that few of us are able to live up to, including me. You don’t have to remind me that we live in
the real world.

Christmas Trade

I recently
watched this sweet UP Network movie. It’s the latest in a long line of similar parent/child
mind-swapping comedies. Confused? I’ll back up and explain. Here’s the general
plotline of the shows: a workaholic parent and their pre-teen or teen child have
a complete mental disconnect for a variety of reasons. It all comes to a head
when the two have a huge argument somewhere public.

At that
point, a magical message in a fortune cookie, a toy, or whatever, switches the
parent’s mind into the child’s body—and vice versa. The two stay like this
until the powers that be decide that they have finally made a permanent
empathetic connection.

In Christmas Trade, the father realizes
that his son wants to spend more time with him. He learns to loosen up a little
and connect with the young man on a more approachable level. In turn, the boy finds
out how complicated the father’s job is, and why he has to work so hard. I can
only give an oversimplification of the plot in three sentences, but I’m sure
you get the moral of the story: in order to truly
relate to loved ones, we need to dig beneath the surface of what we think we understand. I’ll go even further and say that our “certainties”
are often incomplete, or even completely wrong. We make assumptions, which can
lead to miscommunication—at the very least.

“We must learn to regard
people less in the light of what they do, or omit to do, and more in the light
of what they suffer.”—Dietrich Bonhoeffer,
Letters and Papers from Prison

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“No one cares how much
you know, until they know how much you care.”—Theodore Roosevelt

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“Some people think only
intellect counts; knowing how to solve problems, knowing how to get by, knowing
how to identify an advantage and seize it. But, the functions of intellect are insufficient
without courage, love, friendship, compassion, and empathy.”—Dean Koontz